Terra Nova

Anda / Grokster / New Paper

Three quick notes on Anda's Game, the Grokster ruling, and my GLS paper on Norrathian law, respectively.

(This post has nothing to do with the Kalmar Nyckle, btw -- just couldn't think of a good picture to use...)

1) First, I know Cory O posted on it before, but I finally got around to reading Cory Doctorow's Anda's Game.  It's good stuff. I admire his craftsmanship in framing the story to smuggle in a whole laundry list of hot-button MMORPG issues: e.g. avatar gender presentation, MMORPG addiction (the Acanthosis Nigricans bit), and even the pros & cons of RL voice chat vs. role-play.  (Doctorow said he was reading Terra Nova when he wrote it, and it really shows.) The primary thing I liked, though, was how the story resonates with Ted's "Right to Play" article and concepts from Sherry Turkle about the ways MUDs work as spaces for transformative identity experiments. 

The story starts with Anda in a familiar community pressure-cooker: middle school. She escapes from that repressive social mirror (in dramatic fashion) to a militaristic virtual communty (an uberguild "Clan Fahrenheit"), where she finds belonging, self-esteem, and purpose. She ultimately rejects her new-found community, however, when she embraces a noble political agenda. The plot and the title are a tribute to O.S. Card's books, which follow Ender on a similar path. And as noted elsewhere, there are other Easter Eggs to be found. Yes, it's true, as Constance and Randy noted in the comments on the prior thread, that the pure-hearted sweatshop unionizer is a bit of a stretch.  But if so, Doctorow deserves a break -- this is *speculative* fiction, after all.  The point is to get the reader to see ethical dilemmas in MMORPG economies -- this is Julian's Bone Crusher anecdote writ large (though short).

2) Second,  the Grokster decision came down this week.  I signed onto this brief, supporting Grokster. (More briefs here.) The IP blogosphere is now ablaze with commentary -- but by all means, read the opinions first if you read anything.  What does this mean for the City of Heroes case and related attempts to facilitate creative player technologies in MMOGs? I think the news is good -- at least not as bad as it could have been.  The Supreme Court re-affirmed the standard set forth in the Sony Betamax case (the ruling which allowed us all to have cheap video casette recorders), and a majority of the Court refused to find that the p2p software at issue in Grokster fell afoul of that standard.  The prior 9th Circuit ruling was reversed, but only based on the Court's determination that evidence of inducement existed.  In other words, the problem was not that the p2p technology at issue enabled copyright infringement, but that the makers of the technology may have been actively encouraging people to use that technology to unlawfully infringe copyrights. 

Fred (who argued the case in the 9th Circuit) and Rebecca Tushnet are right to see the ruling as a loss for the copyleft: this inducement prohibition chills the spread of technology, to some extent, by opening up new avenues for creative litigation claims (e.g., Tushnet asks if "Rip. Mix. Burn." is now a risky way to advertise?).  Still, one can also see the glass as half full.  The ruling confirms the strength of the Sony standard in the age of digital copyright as protecting the vast majority of technologies (if a company doesn't actively encourage the infringement of copyrights).  Things could have gone worse.

3) Finally, I've posted a draft of an essay that I presented at the GLS conference here.  The essay is entitled "You Will Rule the Planes of Power!" but I might have called it "Narratology, Ludology, and Community meet Law."  I ask if Everquest is, at its core, a text, a game, or a community, and explain why these different frames might lead to different legal policy presciptions.  It's a bit of bridge building, I hope, as I struggle to fit the round pegs of the ITU games studies department into the square holes of broadbrush legal policies.  Critical comments (esp. about Froglok quests) and typo corrections on the draft are welcome by email or in the comments here.

Sony Station Exchange Goes Live

Sony has launched its in-house RMT system (discussed here.) The first exchange-enabled server is called 'The Bazaar'. Currency and characters are already for sale. To get a feel for the interface, see below.

The front page:

Search screen:

Character auctions:

A Barbarian for sale:

In A Gama Da DiGRA

Went quiet, went stateside, went digra, went moonlighting.

Moonlighting strangers,,,

no no, not that kind of moonlighting.

I’ve written an industry focused wrap-up of the Digital Games Research Association’s conference in Vancouver for Gamasutra.

A growing number of flickerbees are using the 'digra' tag, so to check out more photos from me and others go Flickr.

Women Speak

Raya spent four months in 2004 interviewing 110 women, primarily EQ players, about their experiences in mogs. It's a nine-part series, should be interesting. Figuring out what exactly is 'pink' about online gaming - maybe nothing - is not easy.  Are most women online gamers involved in digital recreations of face-to-face gaming (spades, euchre, literati)? What are the implications?

Thanks Oloh, aka Don Shelkey of Silky Venom, for the tip.

Go Cabby (Past) Go!

Kotaku is reporting of Hasbro's "Real World Online Monopoly Live" promotion.  Yet another variant of the blending of the virtual with the physical worlds...

(albeit this case is a virtual world intersecting the real in two places - the board game and the streets of London):

We have 18 taxis fitted with GPS, and they are the playing pieces in the biggest game of Monopoly ever played. Pit your cabbie against 5 others to make your fortune on the streets of London.

Beyond a vaguely  gimmicky and automated feel to this virtualized game, there are other notables.  I am reminded of Jamie Fristrom's observations regarding the "toyetic" and how RL toy manufacturers are seeking to make their toys more interactive.  I am also reminded of an ancient whimsy:    what happens when our game tokens are able to IM and offer us advice, or worse blackmail us, say?   Will games still be fun when we become merely a cheap date?

Err, that will be 10 quid to Coventry Street...

Emergence Emerges Some More

I've got a lot of thoughts sparked by DiGRA coming, including a long meditation on the dreaded ludology-narratology thing, but first I wanted to mention an interesting sub-theme I noticed weaving its way through the conference: emergence, complex systems, non-human agency, network theory and related topics. Nicholas Glean dealt centrally with these issues. I understand  Seth Giddings as also being engaged on these topics, though I missed his paper presentation. I caught a number of other mentions or invocations of these concepts. Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern's Facade (their presentation on it was one of the highlights of the meeting for me) also clearly is a case of emergence, even if they don't explicitly see it as such.

My own paper dealt with the same issues. A draft is available at my blog. I've fiddled with it some since then.

One thing that I think is important about the general suite of concepts under this heading is that they can be painfully vague or misleading in the wrong hands, or just marketing hype. But in the context of games, at the very least, emergence is a technique for creating the psychologically convincing simulation of life or intentionality. There is clearly a deep mental algorithim that human beings use to sort life and non-life that agent-based emergent systems do a pretty good job of tapping into.

I think there's even more to the concept that's relevant to games, and especially persistent virtual world games. But I'll leave that for  the full paper. I do think it's an important concept  for game scholars to consider, and consider well.

GLS Conference

Several Terra Novans (Ted, TL, Cory, Dmitri, and I) have descended on Madison, Wisconsin for the Games, Learning, and Society conference organized by Constance and guided by the James Gee mafia of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  As the title suggests, the focus is mostly on games in education. Below are notes from the first panel I went to, featuring Henry Jenkins and James Gee. (Updated 6/24 -- added notes from PARC PlayOn guys. Added Social Effects / Addiction.)

Caveat that these are incomplete and perhaps inaccurate.  If I take more notes during the conference, I'll append them. The conference is tri-tracked, but it appears that one track (including this panel) will be webcast, so you may be able to check the accuracy of these.  My editorial comments are in brackets.

Henry Jenkins -
----------------------------

Has a book coming out on media convergence by NYU Press. Book deals with how games and play form structures that later emerge in broader society. 

Part One: Yoyogi Park, Toyko. Asian popular culture is becoming American popular culture. Cosplay costumes-video clips. Video of Chloe Metcalf talking about Cosplay. Jenkin notes how she learns Japanese at a college level to better appreciate anime and Japanese culture. Media literacy as not consuming, but generating popular culture. Dynamic relationship between consumption and production. "Performance, for this generation, seems very important." Video clip: Rockabilly Yankees "deeply embedded in Japanese culture."  Video clips: Boy Band moves. Says this is not about colonialism or cultural imperialism, it is about hybridity.  [Ed: seems to presume there *is* such a thing as Japanese/American cultural identity.]

Part Two: Rethinking Media Literacy. Counter mass media culture - tune out is the only choice.  Says that this is wrong. Cites "Everything Bad is Good for You." [Ed: good critique of this in The Nation.] Genre complexity (various facets of Superman). Visual complexity. Narrative complexity ("Lost")--heightened processing.  Pokemon. Civilization. Cultural complexity--Thai versions of the Western.  Popular films that you "don't get" is a new phenomenon.  Moving past Johnson (not just getting smarter) to distributed cognition. Collective intelligence (via Pierre Levy). Wikipedia. *spoiling* Survivor by collaborative detective work. I love bees [Ed: see McGonigal paper at DiGRA].  Coke Music as an example of fan culture interplay with users. Andrew Blau, Future of Independent Media. Joshua Meeter, 14yr old, animator.  Peter "TheSidDog" Medina on Sims Movies.  Ed "Grizzly Bear" Droste. [Ed: yep--all amateur production examples.]  Napster generation? Appropriative nature of creativity.  Lowfi/Digital aesthetics.

Most of the kids who are smart, articulate creative, etc. are home schooled.  "Schools are failing them." New technologies make home schooling more powerful. <Kids aren't using screen media too much?>

Media Literacy Skills illustrative list (that kids should have):
* ability to critically assess information gathered from multiple sources
* ability to appreciate works from many different aesthetic traditions
* an understanding of context within which media are produced, distributed, and consumed
-- more powerful gatekeepers also becoming less significant
* ability to express self through range of media
* ability to assess which media is most appropriate for a given purpose
* ability to meaningfully participate in collective intelligence community
* ability to think in multimodal terms
* an ethical framework for thinking about our freedoms and responsibilities as educators
-- copyright industries are feeding schools information about copyright ethics

Suggests that digital divide is closing... sort of.  Or maybe not. School deskills learners by not providing technologies that students use outside of schools?

Paradigm Shift -- media literacy should be taught across the curriculum. Multiculturalism was an example--new media should be another example (not an added-on subject).

James Gee -
----------------------------

Wants to talk about two crises in schools/society.

First is crisis known for 30 years -- fourth grade slump.  Reading skills at fourth grade drop--scores for reading are good until 4th grade, but when reading is used to learn other subjects, this falls off.  New crisis is exemplified by Friedman's "Flat World" -- the college slump.  We are outsourcing all sorts of commoditized jobs, high and low-- all standardized jobs are being sent to other countries. Innovation and creativity is the source of new industry. Belief that we'll be the innovators and keep the non-commoditized jobs--we won't. Says grad students are not coming to the U.S.  Problem is that the school system is about the basics of skill & drill.

The solution to these problems is in our face -- popular culture and the games industry.  "We have a lot to learn from these despised industries form how to solve these crises."  Think about your high school biology textbook -- did you take it to the beach to read it. Unless kids, starting at home, get ready for the complex demands that schools will make on language, you will not be prepared. Yugioh cards -- these are much more complex than what you'll see in textbooks. [Ed: this is so true--understanding the rules of MTG is like grasping a complex statutory scheme.]

The game industry has already set a standard of how to educate people so that they can become innovators.

Let's hope the games industry isn't monopolized into the 18th sequel of James Bond.

At the end of a game, you get an assessment -- example from Rise of Nations. Achievements along all sorts of variables. Variety of graphs and metrics -- 14 pages of statistical assessments that kids consume for pleasure.  The graphs help you understand how to perform better (formative assessment).  What you see is an ideal assessment.

Affinity groups. Games form communities. Kids use games as a basis for derivative creativity.  Common endeavor forms the basis for community. Newbies and masters share same space.  2000 pages produced each day on Age of Mythology.  Encourages intensive and extensive knowledge. [etc - long bullet list re groups...]

Another bullet list of principles.  Games incorporate learning -- the fun of the game is in the learning.  [Hmm-- sounds like Raph re pattern recognition] Games are presently frustrating. Cycle of expertise.  Emergent properties out of knowledge.

Q & A
----------------------------
Q: School is a game too.  School is a bad game, though -- it recruits kids to do useless things.
A (Gee): Schools are at risk--there will be alternatives to existing school.  The paradigm of school will face competition from Microsoft, etc.
A (Jenkins): If current schooling is a game, maybe it is Candyland. Or Chutes and Ladders.  Tic-Tac-Toe.  Point: boring games.  I don't know that we can re-program schools. Churches may be more open-ended. Wants to keep focus on schools because we don't want to give up on kids/teachers in the system.

Q: What changes have you made in your own programs/teaching?
A (Gee): Since the key solution is the baby boom dying or retiring, that's my biggest contribution. [laughter.] Younger generation gets this. I try to teach as little as possible. [laughter.]
A (Jenkins): At MIT, reconceptualized what media looks like. Tying production to theory. Creative opportunities within courses. [Hmm, nobody has talked about Ted Sizer and the move toward portfolios...]

Q: What would a curriculum of the future look like?  How do you incorporate *relevance*?
A (Gee): Liberals try to make us about who we are.  Conservatives are off the interest. Make it applied to real problems and step into real identities -- take on the identity that you want to have.
A (Jenkins): Project on Williamsburg.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday morning

Robert Moore, Nicholas Ducheneaut, & Eric Nickell
Leveraging Virtual Omniscience: Mixed Methodologies for Studying Social Life in Persistent Online Worlds

Bob
-------

General overview of what "ubicomp" is.  MIT Place Lab -- trying to capture near-total behavioral data through hundreds of sensors in a home ($700k).  Challenge is how to make sense of masses of data.

But it isn't so hard in virtual worlds -- MMORPGs are booming.  This is a social scientist's dream to study.  It is much easier to know what goes on in that world, because everything is mediated.  Here, you have monitoring down to a very fine level of detail (like the monitor on the sugar bowl in the MIT Place Lab). 

Virtual ethnography / Conversation Analysis / Analytic software

A word about virtual ethnography -- a little controversial because the focus is on the virtual world and not on the user at the keyboard.  Quote from Hine (2000).

Regular Ethnography -- field notes, observations, pictures
Virtual Ethnography -- reduces travel costs (easy to be in "field"), focus on critical episode, using virtual cameras
Rutter & Smith (2002) -- quotes suggest that this data collection is *too* easy

SWG: standard EQ-model game, levels, professions -- slew of non-combat professions
Hot spots were starports and cantinas.  Starports are transportation hubs.  Cantinas are cogregation spots -- will focus on them for the rest of the talk.

What goes on in Cantina?  Seedy establishments where weary warriors seek mind-healing from scantily-clad dancers.  Substantive cross between cantina and Jabba the Hut's lair. [This is a fun thought...] Entertainers heal battle fatigue -- need to watch a dancer or listen to a musician.  Mind-buff > temporary service you pay for.  XP grinding that is automated.  [Cf. Squire/Steinkuehler wrote on this in generating cyberculture/s.]  Socializing and role-play.  Jokes / knowledge sharing / role play.

Coronet -- comments from players in role-play "spiced out zombies" -- ooc "afk hell" -- real division between role-players and power gamers.

Going Deeper - Conversational analysis.
Record --> compress --> transcribe (data crunching in "real" ethnography)
In VE: screen capture -- problem is that data balloons too fast.  Hack = put in a Videotape and don't record to HD -- need to increase text size for readability on video.  Compress.  Transcribe.  Nice benefit = system logs, which are time stamped.  System logs do much of your work for you.

Service delivery for dance is "self service" dancers don't know you are watching.  Clapping doesn't target a particular entertained. 

Compare "Do you mind-buff" transaction.  Eight and a half minutes of process -- like getting your hair cut.  It would probably be pretty unusual not to talk.  People don't always interact (might go AFK).  Low-level game commands have a broader impact on social atmosphere of games.

Nic
------

Taking things to a broader level of analysis.
Notion of self-serve vs. full-serve as a way to explore the claims of "third place".
Placed bots (which are paid accounts) within SWG.  The bots are just regular players posted to absorb data.  (They had to stand up and sit down to avoid being booted for AFK -- issues with server resets, etc.)  Used one PC per bot.  Used text logs (built into SWG) in columnar format.  3 month study.  700 megs of text files.

Raw data.  Use of gestures (directional) indicated in text logs [since MUDs]. Beggar bot. Since they never played their bots, the bots looked miserable.  Beggar bot would stand up and sit down.  Reminded them of a panhandler.  Insight: perhaps they saw him as a pan handler.  *He had acquired 300,000 credits* -- enough for 3 starships."  [:-0]  In game emails "I have seen you alone in the corner for months,  Don't be afraid." [Laughter.]

Graphs of sociability data in Coronet City Cantina.  [Reported on this study in an earlier TN post.] Interpreting the data: there are some people who want drive-thru service seeking in cantinas.  [Probably power gamers!]  AFK grinders --> those who gesture directionally and do not receive must be automated macros -- people recognize that these not legit, so they don't reciprocate.  [corrolates to spam problems IRL].  Socializers have reciprocal send/receive.

Compare to Theed Cantina -- you see same numbers of power gamers and AFK grind spammers, but socializers have much greater volume.  [So, in other words, validates the IC and OOC comments of role-player above.]

Virtual geography seems to interact with this.

Putting it all together:
[doesn't talk about it, but the gist seems to be that emprical work and ethnography is required to understand the nature of the spaces.] 

Now they hand out the data (video, spreadsheets, logs,etc.) to members of the conference audience and let them try to draw their own conclusions from the data.  [Fun presentation technique -- harness the conference hive. :-)]

Dmitri Williams
The Social Impact of MMOG Play
----------------------------------------

Goal: why do we freak out about games like we do? Gather data. Analyze.

Study:
* agression
* social capital
* relationships
* media use
* cultivation

Stereotype -- gamers are nerds in basements that come out wearing trenchcoats -- not true.  Games are part of the same media trend / reaction that has been occurring for many years.  His intuitions: about women / dissolution of nuclear families.  That's where the stereotypes probably come from.

Research:
1) Negative displacement or aggression. (children are the ordinary subject).
2) Gaps in the research.
* sampling issue with age (MMOGs are not a particularly child-focused game).
* social play (no-brainer -- but often hard to get people to see).
* methodological problems (issues with correllation / causation -- game use itself is a problematic variable) level of nuance between different sorts of games.  36,000 games in one database -- 96 platforms.  Very hard to generalize.
* Lack of longitudinal research. Lab-based work is the rule.

Internet research:
Cites Robert Putnam -- "Bowling Alone" 300 page tome of declines in civic participation (we are bowling less, playing cards less, going to church less).  He disagree with causes, but we *do* have these social declines.  Demand / Supply.  Idea: the demand for sociability has remained, but supply of places for socialization is greater -- Internet provides substitute.  Bad?
* Atomization (Sunstein)
Putnam and Social Capital
* social networks and associated norms of reciprocity
* bridging and bonding (only a few pages in Putnam)
* bridging lets you associate with new people and new things -- social WD40.
* bonding social capital = value transfer (shoulder to cry on, monetary loan).  Bridging = access, bonding = support.
* "strength of weak ties" you need a loose network

Measurement scale:
                        Online        Offline
Bonding            1                2
Bridging            3                4

Hypotheses:
Does increase in online gaming:
* not doing homework?
* not doing jobwork
* socially desirable media? (news is good, books, magazine)
* socially undesirable media? (entertainment television)
* agression

Social capital:
Increase in gaming?
* harm family?
* decrease civic attitudes?

Setting up method:
Really important to "get in and play the damn thing."  Need to go in and play the heck out of the game, take notes, interview players, interview designers.  This leads to asking the right kind of questions.

Asheron's Call 2:
Game is underpopulated -- it did not sell well.
World is too big for the number of people on the server.
The game's major place was not crawling with people.
MMORPGs vary in their sociability -- this is the lowest that you can get.

Method:
Panel study with limited control group.
Split by prior play.
Mailed 400 copies to people in all 50 states.
Subjects agreed to play twice a week for one month, 16 hrs/ week: 64 hours.
Post-test
Retention rates: 92% retention

Results: Controlled Newbie.
* reduction in extended friendship networks
* increase in civic activism
* decrease in religious services
Null findings: schoolwork, job, depression, loneliness, agression, social capital (*lots* of stuff-no change)

Veterans (not controlled, tho!):
* did decrease in schoolwork, hours per week
* tv use down 12%
* tv sports down 27%
* movies down
Agression (do you think it is okay to do "x")
physical agression goes up 1.6%
verbal agression goes down 1.5%
(makes sense -- killing mobs left & right / chatting in a friendly way)

Social capital -- no newbie effect -- experienced decrease bridging/bonding
Offline: *bonding* goes down -- 3 questions implying less social support
respect for offline community (bridging) seems to go up.

Results: Social network
Cocooning:
* friends 1-3 no change
* friend 4-6, decline
* travel declines
* no impact with family

Putnam: strange increases from the newbies.  Explaination: sense of efficacy -- they can affect change in a group.  leading, organizing, mobilizing?

Summary

Now for something completely different:
[Dmitri says he'll be putting this finding up on Terra Nova in a few months when the paper gets worked out, so I won't post a spoiler. :-)]

Jack Kuo, Will Huang, & Jeffrey Wilkins
Exploring the Diagnosis and Treatment of Online Gaming Addiction
-------------------------------

First slide reads "Are you addicted?"  He recognizes that this is potentially inflammatory. 

A story: WoW -- young man gets into it and finds that the more you do it, the more you want to keep doing it.  The grind as requiring increased investments.  Gets a little out of control at points.  Plays in a way that starts impacting on work -- coming in late, calling in sick, girlfriend bugs him, stops seeing friends.  Wants to cut back.  Has a hard time doing it. Started having some cravings.  Got irritable.  Bugged when he was traveling, and wanted to get back to his game / guild.

* cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
* motivational interviewing

Why these theories?
* evidence-based
* non-judgmental (not like "you must quit before we can treat you")
* on demand
* customized
* adaptable
* contextualized (note these are kind of game-like)

[Slide of a scale -- angels and devils.  What is good and bad about games?]

Good: pretty, reward with random probability (basis of Vegas!), social, rush, role-play, competitive, winning.

Bad: expensive, time, guild may be run by 16-year old kids [Ted says this--laughter], flames, kill-stealing, addiction -- becoming meaner and more cruel, non-gamers don't understand, play as a couple. (Note about how playing as a couple is bad/strange for games -- okay for golf).  Physically harmed by not moving -- repetitive strain injuries. [Ted wants "addictive" in the positive column.] Frustration with the game -- game is not good enough.  Hanging out with people you really don't like.  Contentious, 16-yr old "smarty pants"

Self-report first
Diagnostic criteria

Talks about how to draw the line -- where is too far. Emotional band-aid. Girl-friend. Denial. Loss of job.  Bad performance in school. Emotional discomfort. Immobility.

Their criteria is taken from the framework for pathological gambling.
* preoccupation with gaming
* increasing need for same satisfaction
* can't stop, though this is tried
* increasingly irritable
* plays longer than originally intended
* lies to others in order to conceal
* jeopardized or lost a significant relationship, job, education-- because of online gaming
* other problems (serious/physical) are being ignored because of gaming (from substance abuse, not pathalogical gambling)
* craving effects -- increasing arousal before, satisfaction afterward

A few of these may be normal, and most have it -- but 5 or more is cause for worry -- questions go to "to what extent is your playing messing with your life"?

What are your goals?
* professional
* academic
* personal

Is there are problem that exists between these goals and achieving your goals?

GAME OVER

Constance's Commentary
------------

Goes Meta -- why do we need to do this.  Effects of games. "Fear-mongering" in mass media. Dmitri's work shows that the effects of these spaces is very nuanced.  Jack, Will, Jefferey -- reacting to the notion of games as substance.  Bothered most by the fact that the media has co-opted a conversation that these discussion makes more meaningful. 

Issue:
Games are designed experiences.  Thoroughly about interaction.  Different players create different forms of experience.
Need for insider gamer knowledge -- how do you know what the important variables are? What is the proper unit of analysis?  Guild?  Group hunt?  What does X mean in the first place?  What is addiction?  Gamer's definition diverges from the player's.  Mother of player may sue Sony based on a meaning of addiction taken outside of the gamer context.  We have a real problem doing media effects research without a robust understanding of the games themselves.

Need for longitudinal work.
Need for normative models.
"'Real life' is always 'my life' -- 'my life' is real."  The answers are very complex -- people writing headlines don't like complex answers.

Developments in the MOG Market

Frequent poster and Online Alchemy CEO Mike Sellers sends this report on recent developments in the multiplayer online game (mog) market:

"Last week, Blizzard announced WoW now has over 2 million subscribers.  And this doesn't count China, where they've just opened up.  They report having over 500,000 concurrent users in China during their open beta.
(http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=5696)

On the same day, rumors (later confirmed) abounded that Monolith had sold The Matrix Online to SOE.  Twenty-six people on the team were given offers to go to San Diego, the rest were out of jobs.  The future of Monolith in the wake of this, not to mention the entire market,  appears uncertain. "

Mike continues:
"Moreover, SOE also obtained the exclusive rights to create a MMOG based on DC Comics properties.  This of course sets them up to go head-to-head with their biggest US rival, NCSoft.
(http://www.sonyonline.com/corp/press_releases/061705_warnerbros.html)

And today, CNN noted in a story about Atari that '"The Matrix Online," published by Sega, has only sold 43,100 copies since its launch in late March, according to The NPD Group.'
http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/16/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm?cnn=yes
It's worth noting that this is about half of The Sims Online's abysmal sales in about the same amount of time. 

WoW is pulling in probably close to $200 million annually in *profits* (on almost $400M gross revenue), while MXO may never see profitability -- and yet the latter was still valuable enough to SOE to purchase it.

All of which goes to show that while not as hit-driven as the offline game market, the MMOG market continues to be high risk/high reward.  Further, the long-predicted market consolidation appears to be taking place.  What this will mean for future MMOGs isn't yet clear, but it's a safe bet that this isn't particularly good for those hoping for the open-ended innovative atmosphere that some players wish would appear. "

Sticky NeoPets

Game Journalism reports (via WSJ Online) that Viacom has paid 160$ million for the Neopets website and 20 million subscribers.   This is significant money, e.g. when compared with many MMORPGs. 

I've never played there, but I empathize with RichM's remark:

Being a "hands-on" Dad, I got familiar with the site and soon became addicted to DestructoMatch, giving me first-hand experience in why Neopets is one of the Internet's stickiest web sites - and why Viacom would pay $160 million for it.

When is a "sticky website" a virtual world, if ever?   Are there gradients of casual dress that becomes our worlds and imagination, and are these gradients loosely suggested by this other raging retrospective?   Is a world what you call it -  regardless of how you and it relate to each other.  Or do universal metrics apply?

Ed/ (6/23) The Red Herring slant on this deal ("immersive advertising").

Ce n'est pas un monde virtuel

Although this has been discussed once or twice before, it is clearly time to charge fearlessly into the breach.

Are graphical digital worlds just text worlds with pretty graphics?  After all, people get all excited about sales of virtual items, weddings, stalking, gender bending, and governance, yet all of these behaviors happened in earlier text-based worlds and were probably discussed on MUD-Dev in 1997.  Several of these comments touch on this topic in the context that creativity in Second Life is no different than MOOs,  so I wanted to put a stake in the ground and then duck and cover:

Physically simulated 3D worlds are fundamentally different from text worlds.

Read on for why

#1 Place matters

Thoughts on place articulated here.  More than those arguments, see the next point.

#2 Reading is not doing

Reading a description of a place plugs into very different parts of your brain than seeing it, hearing it, and interacting with it. I've just started reading Steven Johnson's "Everything Bad is Good for You" and one of the early discussion enumerates the differences between reading and playing games.

Sure, text games could have a beautiful description of a sunset that could only be reached after reading a description of racing several competitors to the beach and another description of the long and dangerous climb to the top of a cliff, but claiming it is the same experience as driving a simulated car against other people and then fighting them up the cliff face is just silly.

#3 Avatars matter

Jeremy Bailenson and our own Nick Yee are doing amazing work analyzing the impact of virtual actors on our brains.  Avatars are perceived as real and plug into the many parts of our brains that have evolved to handle interpersonal communication.  While there are certainly experiments that show that we can personify IRC chat, the range of behaviors and communication possible with avatars far exceeds text.

As an aside, remember that text is a subset of 3D.  There was an assertion that 3D couldn't impart smell to an object.  Not true, since you can easily have text within a 3D world to cue the many concepts, senses, and factors that don't yet lend themselves to 3D visualization.  Similarly, just because the primary communication method is avatars doesn't mean that IM doesn't have its place.  Anything that can be done in a text world can be done within a 3D world.  The converse is certainly not true.

#4 Simulation matters

Text worlds allow creators to write code and text to generate an interactive text description of skydiving.  Simulated worlds allow that and also allow creators to build parachutes and airplanes that enable skydiving in a 3D world.  'Nuff said.

So, pulling this all together, why is creativity in collaborative 3D worlds better than text?  First of all, let's all agree that collaboration in text is (technologically) much easier.  Everyone on a computer has a keyboard and can type, so creating text is easy.  It also has no technological barriers to entry, requires (approximately) no storage space or bandwidth, and it easily crosses the membrane between the real and the virtual.

Despite all of those advantages, creating text collaboratively is hard.  New technologies keep getting created to help, but group text creation is hampered by the lack of many cues we take for granted.  Precedence, position, who's turn is it, do they agree, what mode is the conversation taking are all obvious in the real world, but very hard to translate into text.  But they can be translated into 3D (again, read why place matters).

Moving beyond this, take the piano example I use in many of my talks.  I show the screen shot sequence needed to construct a piano in Ultima Online.  Sure, it looks like a piano, but it isn't a piano in any useful way.  In the same way, even the most evocative description of a piano isn't a piano.  But a suitably constructed and simulated piano in a 3D world is a piano in every meaningful way.  You can compose a symphony on it, play it to entertain friends, use it to separate space in a room, provide seating at parties, provide a dance platform for Michelle Pfeiffer, etc.  In fact, one could easily see the smooth curve from a Korg piano synthesizer all the way to a Cubey Terra's piano in Second Life. That virtual piano, an impressive act of creation on its own, has enabled further acts of creation that exactly mimic the real world.  Moreover, those acts can occur in a social setting, so some fine jamming at the digital jazz club can be experienced live by 30 people in the virtual room.

So, the gauntlet has been thrown upon the (digital) ground.  I can already sense disagreement and arguments, but -- with luck -- all of our worlds will be better for the discussion.

Meta Grinding and Nemo

Second Life so many stories that I try not to clog Terra Nova with them, but two articles on New World Notes deserve your attention.

The first, "Evolving Nemo", details the creation of evolving AI creatures within Second Life. While boids and genetic algorithms built on top of SL's scripting language are interesting, what pushes this effort over the top is the use of shared code and standards within SL's ALife group.

The second, "Grinding the World" covers the exploits of residents determined to ride skateboards all over Second Life. What sets this effort apart from previous attempts is that they've actually built a board that's fun to ride (and shot a video to show what it can do). It certainly isn't THUG 2 yet, but there is something magical about grinding a 30 meter tall replica of Tin Tin's rocket with a group of friends!

It's amazing what SL's residents make as they combine community, creation, and markets with a pinch of physics and scripting.

Longitudinal Census Data at PlayOn Blog

Given that the virtual worlds we spend 20 hours a week in are able to keep track of everything we do in them, there's a gold-mine of social science data (personality, social networks, etc.) that's being accumulated. It's a pity that it's so hard to get access to aggregate server-side data. This is changing though with games like World of Warcraft that allow third-party census mods. But so far, most census mods have only served to provide snapshot data.

Several researchers at PARC (who I'm working with this summer) have devised an automated system that cycles through 3 servers for both Alliance and Horde and performs a census about every 16 minutes. This longitudinal data provides a way to answer far more interesting questions that the static data is unable to. For example:

• Do players who group more often level faster?
• Do players in guilds spend more time playing each week than those not in a guild? (answer)
• How does server type affect guild size or grouping among players?

We will answer these questions and many more at our new PlayOn Blog. We hope you come join us in interpreting and playing with the data. We will have new entries each day this coming week.

DiGRA 2005

Terra Novans descend on Vancouver tomorrow for DiGRA 2005, Changing Views: Worlds in Play.  As you can see from the program, TL Taylor will be kicking off four days of hundreds of videogame-related papers with a keynote address (w00t!).   The other big news, though, is that many of the hundreds of papers are now available in full-text form online.

Paper presentations from Terra Novans:

• Timothy Burke, Department of History, Swarthmore College: Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me a Match: Artificial Societies vs. Virtual Worlds
• Constance Steinkuehler, University of Wisconsin-Madison: Styles of Play: Gamer-Identified Trajectories of Participation in MMOGs
• Constance Steinkuehler, Curriculum & Instruction, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Dmitri Williams, Speech Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as “Third Places”
• Dmitri Williams, University of Illinois: A Brief Social History of Game Play
• Nicholas Yee, Stanford University: Motivations of Play in MMORPGs

The list following is a partial slice of the diversity of MMORPG-related papers that are available.  These are the ones that sparked my initial interest based on the titles, but there are hundreds of papers--if any of these look interesting, the best bet is to just browse yourself.

• Peter Edelmann, Interdisciplinary Studies, Univeristy of British Columbia
  Framing Virtual Law
• Anders Eriksson, Division of Philosophy, Royal Institute of Technology, Stock
  *Kalle Grill, Division of Philosophy, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
  Who owns my avatar? - Rights in virtual property
• Lisa Galarneau, The University of Waikato, New Zealand
  Spontaneous Communities of Learning: A Social Analysis of Learning Ecosystems in Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming (MMOG) Environments
• William Huber, Art History, UCSD
  Fictive affinities in Final Fantasy XI: complicit and critical play in fantastic nations.
• Elina M.I. Koivisto, Nokia Research Center
  Christian Wenninger, Sony NetServices
  Enhancing player experience in MMORPGs with mobile features
• Lars Konzack, multimedia, Aalborg University.
  Thessa Lindof, multimedia, Aalborg University
  From Mass Audience to Massive Multiplayer: How Multiplayer Games Create New Media Politics
• Tanya Krzywinska, Brunel University, School of Arts
  ‘Who’s World is it?’: Creative Play and Player Presence in World of Warcraft
• Ian MacInnes, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
  Virtual Worlds in Asia: Business Models and Legal Issues
• Jane McGonigal, Department of Performance Studies, University of California
  SuperGaming! Distributed Design for Massively Collaborative Play, or, Why I Love Bees
• David Myers, Loyola University
  /hide: The aesthetics of group and solo play
• Mike Molesworth, The Media School, Bournemouth University
  *Janice Dengeri-Knott, The Media School, Bournemouth University
  The pleasures and practices of virtualised consumption in digital spaces
• Daniel Pargman, School of Humanities and Informatics, University of Skövde,
  Andreas Eriksson, Department of Numercial Analysis and Computer Science
  Law, order and conflicts of interest in massively multiplayer online games
• Jason Rhody, University of Maryland, College Park
  Game Fiction: Playing the Interface in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Asheron’s Call
• Javier Salazar
  On the Ontology of MMORPG Beings: A Theorethical Model for Research

Terra Nova at Supernova

For those of you attending Supernova 2005 next week, be sure to stop by the “Virtual Worlds, Real Money” workshop which will be moderated by yours truly. Cory’s participating as a speaker, along with Ian Bogost and Bill Barhydt from Sennari.

The Supernova conference is organized by Dan’s Wharton colleague Kevin Werbach whose stated goal is to “bring together business, government, and technology thought leaders to understand how decentralization and pervasive connectivity are changing our world.”  It won’t be nearly as much fun without Dan (dude, easy on that Percoset!) but I’m really looking forward to the workshop, as it’s a great opportunity to take discussions about business opportunities in online games into a non-gaming, non-academic context and engage in an exchange of ideas with some stellar industry leaders.

Virtual Violence

Games and aggression have been a hotbutton item for years, and the controversy isn't going away any time soon. Some of it is fueled by conservative paranoia and some by justifiable parental angst. Nevertheless, as Richard pointed out recently, it doesn't mean that the questions are automatically without merit. So I give you this to chew on--a study of gaming and violence that specifically tested an MMOG, did it out of a lab and used a control group:

Hot off the presses as of yesterday in a mainstream, peer-reviewed journal:

Williams, D. & Skoric, M. (2005). Internet Fantasy Violence: A Test of Aggression in an Online Game. Communication Monographs, 22(2), p. 217-233.
Research on violent video games suggests that play leads to aggressive behavior. A longitudinal study of an online violent video game with a control group tested for changes in aggressive cognitions and behaviors. The findings did not support the assertion that a violent game will cause substantial increases in real-world aggression. The findings are presented and discussed, along with their implications for research and policy.

You can download the article from the Taylor & Francis website. The less ethical might look here. I hope that readers here will take the results in context. This is one game and other titles may differ. It's also not a test of young children, but is rather a typical MMOG sample with a broader age range. And (he hints), other research coming out of this same study shows that the game has other effects that are both good and bad. I'll save that for another post.

Personally, I'm still very agnostic about the range of effects that "games" may have. I think that a solid longitudinal test of children probably will show aggression effects (once someone does one), and a host of positives as well. To my mind, they aren't mutually exclusive.

Contradictions (2)

Here’s another contradiction about virtual worlds. This one is about character ownership.

The left-wing point of view is that you project some of yourself into the virtual world, you build up social capital, and you become part of a community. So the arguments go, this entitles you to ownership of your character and a say in the governance of the virtual world.

The right-wing point of view is that you spent time and effort creating your character and making it what it is, therefore by right it’s yours. So the arguments go, this entitles you to sell it on eBay or wherever.

Let's think about this.

The left-wing point of view seems to suggest that anyone who buys or sells their character has lost any claim that they own it (because they can’t sell their identity or social capital). In other words, if you buy a character it’s no longer yours!

The right-wing point of view seems to suggest that developers shouldn’t be able to sell ready-made characters because they didn’t spent time and effort making them (or, if they did, then the players shouldn’t be able to do it because it was the developers’ same time and effort that made those, too).

Can either wing be correct? If so, how?

Richard

Casual Dress

Keith Stuart on the Guardian Unlimited Blog posted an update ("Casual gaming: the new hardcore") to the perspective-duel between  "hard-core" and "casual" gamers...

This distinction may be mostly 'meta' - useful to those who live, work, and report on gamer culture and community.   Or maybe not.  I don't have a good sense of how much  Barbara Gamer worries these points.  What is interesting, though, is that I heard once that this distinction might be more meaningful to those who only "casually play" than the other way around:  John Average doesn't  want to be associated with what his son does...

Earlier this year at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC), I attended the Casual Games Summit (1 day workshop).   Fascinating.  More so than I thought it would be at the time.   The sound-bite  was that casual game sector is larger and arguably more influential than probably most "hard-core" gamer/developers might imagine.   I was also struck how much it seemed that the casual game developer seemed to crave recognition from the rest of the GDC crowd.

An interesting vibe from the summit was how in succeeding generations of casual games  (a generation = "year or two") we might expect to see importation of features from hard-core games.  Through this prism, arguably, the MMOG represents the pinnacle of the hard-core.  For example, I recall  discussion on  how persistence and social/community support are working their way into the "casual game" business and development models.   I don't think this should be surprising:  stickiness is good for business.    And arguably, Second Life ("One Tringo to Rule Us") and Puzzle Pirates are already pushing similar  envelopes in the larger scrimmage.

I suppose, in the end, the distinction between "hard-core" and "casual" gamer will become a false one.  Ubiquity has a way of undermining our choices in how we identify ourselves.   In the mean time,  Yohoho!  and pass the rum!

Playing Alone

I took a header off my bike earlier this week, but luckily I was traveling at speed on blacktop and my face broke my fall.

This resulted in a couple of new developments in my life: some pleasantly-unflappable surgeons kindly sewed my lips back on me, and then they introduced me to Percoset (aka ocycodone). I cannot begin to tell you how much I love this drug. But that is for another day.

The combination of the drug-induced reverie, large amounts of time recuperating in bed wondering whether I will always speak like Sylvester Stallone, and the facial damage naturally got me thinking about what everyone thinks about in these situations: yes, instanced worlds and the films "Abre los Ojos" & "Vanilla Sky".

The films are essentially the same, except that Cameron Crowe's English-language version of Alejandro Amenábar's Spanish film is less successful, largely due to Crowe's overly-sycophantic reliance on Amenábar's original and of course the presence in the English version of the hideous Cameron Diaz. (But I digress: Perkies do that do you...but while I'm digressing can I urge you immediately to rent Amenábar's "Mar Adentro"/"The Sea Inside". The range and ability demonstrated by Amenábar and his screenwriter, Mateo Gil, makes me feel ill with jealousy. Amenábar also directed "The Others" in between these two films, which I found less interesting, though still beautiful, smart, and inspired: together these three films represent an unbelievable batting streak that makes A-list Hollywood directors look like they're playing in the bush leagues. Ok, end of digressions. "Honey, could you take these pills away for a bit? Um, just take them out of the room for, maybe 20 minutes or so, then bring them straight back. Ok, 15 minutes, I'll type as fast as the grazes will allow.")

So the films [Spoiler Alert] are about a rich guy who can't deal with his hideous facial injuries, enrols himself in life extension program, then offs himself, and has his head/body preserved in the life extension facility until modern medicine can cure him; all the while partaking of a simulated reality/dream that takes up just prior to the point where he kills himself. We see the story through the chronology that he experiences, and we have to work out how/why various things that can't be true are happening to him. How can it be that we have to experience the grotesque Cameron Diaz again? Didn't she die in the accident? Is he mad? Are his wicked partners behind the illusion? Etc etc.

His waking-dream is, of course, not far from the topic of this blog, virtual worlds. But it's a specific example of virtual world design, one that is fairly recent: I'm talking about instanced worlds. As anyone who plays newer-style MMOGs has experienced, there is a trend away from wholly persistent worlds, where the content is available to all, to instanced environments where players are locked away from the rest of the world. You find this all over the place: in City of Heroes, where I've been playing recently, most of the tasty, high-xp villains are found in missions that happen within buildings, and are available only to those in your team. At higher levels, "taskforces" are where the instances occur, and teams can expect to be locked away incommunicado from the rest of the world for hours. In the endgame of World of Warcraft it's pretty much all instances (or so teh ueb3r Tim Burke tells me). There are lots of game design reasons for instancing, including appropriate balancing protagonist/antagonist levels, easier continuity and content control, and so on.

My Percoset-induced rambling is to wonder whether instancing of the kind seen in "Abre los Ojos"--ie a virtual world built just for you, with everything revolving around your needs, and interests--is the sort of environment that we will inevitably see emerging. I suspect that it will be. One only has to look around at the desire of the affluent to have every whim catered to--gated communities, high-end shopping malls, hand-stitched leather seats in SUVs--that an obvious endpoint is to have the entire world revolve around you. Which is to say that instancing is a likely wave/world of the future.

The social issues that emerge from this will obviously be challenging. We've seen various commentators decry the collapse of communities in real life, for example and most obviously Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone". Cass Sunstein took up the issue in "Republic.com" and suggested that perfect filtering and the availability of just-what-I-want on the Internet would prove socially corrosive. I thought this was nonsense, but my argument against Sunstein was that he didn't understand filters or the social/cognitive psychology that he relied on. I didn't suggest that there won't be effects from specialization of information. I think that instancing, if it becomes ubiquitous and if large swathes of the population choose this over living with others, could easily generate unexpected social effects of the kind that Putnam and others suggest. It will have implications for democratic theory, especially those theories of democracy that find its political legitimacy in a well-informed demos (so-called "deliberative democracy"). It will also test whether people actually want to live together, or whether they'd just prefer to live alone (with the illusion of others around, but where everyone else is either an NPC to help them in their little instance, or a nicely-rendered texture-map to titillate or admire).

I don't have any idea how this will play out.

But I do know that I'm due another pill.

"Honey!..."

Rent-A-Vatar

Frequent poster Lee Delarm reports that uber accountness is now available by the hour. Is XP insurance far behind?

AIIDE Citations

This year's AIIDE (Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment) conference seems to have been quite the show.   We're fortunate that around the web some very fine people have gone to the trouble to document what happened in  detail and with keen insight ( Andrew Stern: [1], Michael Mateus:  [2], Robin Hunicke:  [3]).  Others? ...

A sound-bite summary  is unfair, but we have to start somewhere.  Not knowing where to begin, I'll turn to Robin:

But after all my travels, one thing is perfectly, crystal clear: Game AI is in a rut...If anything, todays admittedly complex game AI is “just the price of entry” for modern titles. When it fails, ratings suffer - but when it succeeds… do players really notice? Managing the set pieces of gameply (playing “traffic cop") won’t take titles beyond the 8’s, and they won’t push gamelay in ways that broaden the market. For that, we need to invest in new approaches, incremental change… and tools that harness (and expand) the power of human animators, artists and designers.

In the end its hard to see how  Game AI will matter much without the game design to amplify its value.    Or as the old wry line went:  why bother with exquisitely mannered and deeply  intellectual Quake bots - they're dead or you're dead in 10 secs.   Who'd know.   So there has to be a bootstrap - between game design *and* the AI design.  Where would you start?

Human Pac-Man

The BBC reports on the National University of Singapore's Mixed Reality Lab's Human Pacman project. 

Players equipped with a wearable computer, headset and goggles can physically enter a real world game space by choosing to play the role of Pacman or one of the Ghosts.

The article continues:

A central computer system keeps track of all their movements with the aid of GPS receivers and a wireless local area network...  Combining both real and virtual elements, the game allows the human Pacman to 'see' virtual cookies with the aid of the special headset scattered on the street which the player can then 'eat' by walking through them...

The story says the technological limits are a significant issue, though, because it is hard for the system to keep accurate track of player locations:

Typical GPS receivers have an accuracy of about 10 to 30 meters, but for a flawless gaming experience augmented reality games need the error margin to be within the millimetre range.  Tracking players also becomes impossible when they get too close to high-rise buildings that block GPS signals.

Of course, technology costs are also a major issue preventing this from being commercially viable at the moment. 

Related: If you're an ACM member,  Nicolas Nova notes a forthcoming ACM Computers in Entertainment issue on pervasive gaming.

Let's see -- Toru Iwatani turned his pizza thoughts into Pac-Man in the 1980... so that slates the trial run of augmented reality WoW for 2030 or so?  Any thoughts on how pervasive gaming relates to the MMORPG genre?  Is pervasive gaming techno-LARPing?

I want to hear you $cream

Deep breath - - - - go!

Money, performance and rights are in the air this week here at the sprawling TN offices, well that and endless death matches over who gets the window seat.

A central issue in games these days is the line between player and creator, TL, Sal Humphreys, me, Greg & Dan and most recently Betsy, in fact probably all of us at some point, have all explored these themes from different angles.

It’s an interesting issue as we can see that power relations are changing in the industry creating skirmishes all along the fault lines.

Developer-Publishers are in an difficult position sat in the centre of all this. Allegedly they have mountains of cash pouring in. But on the one hand amateurs are creating stuff then claiming all kinds of rights, and on the other professionals are looking for a bigger cut. We tend to focus on the punters here, so its illustrative to see what the pro’s are wining about, sorry, discussing.

OK, so, meandering towards, a point here, the LA times published a piece the other day titled Voice Actors Seek a Share of Video Game Profits, which covers, well, voice actors (specifically Lynnanne Zager who screams for a living) wanting more money for their work on games. I kinda think same old same old,,, and wish both sides luck in the drawn-out slug fest that the dispute looks like its going to be.

It makes me wonder what's in everyone’s interest. In a way the fight is about maintaining status quo.

But -hello- we have things like the internet now. Why do we need “talent” when we have “the public”.

America’s Next Supermodel, American Idol (side bar: why is the US obsessed with putting ‘America’ or ‘American’ in the title of everything, are they afraid they will wake up and forget who they are? – I do have a theory on this,,, but moving on), BioWare holding public casing calls for fans to be faces in the game, SOE looking of EQesque babes .

Is the real Hollywoodisation of the game industry the extension of an old business model maintaining ingrained power asymmetries?

Is this voice actor dispute going to solidify the system or is it one of the dying screams for attention as the game industry turns its back and looks out for talent and ideas rather than inwards and backwards?

Money for nothin'...

I’ve been asked to introduce myself with a short bio. You’ve been warned.

Most of you either know me or know of me; surviving nineteen years with an opinion in this veil of tears known as the multiplayer online game industry can have that effect. I’ve been variously described as a pioneer of the industry, an ill-tempered harridan that bites the hand that feeds her and – my personal favorite – “that goat-blowing bitch.” Well, everyone needs a hobby, I guess.

Where did it all begin, you ask? I started out as a third assistant to an assistant of the assistant file librarian on GEnie’s Apple II RoundTable in 1986, played Stellar Warrior from Kesmai in beta test that same year and, with eighty of us blasting away at each other and my hands literally shaking from the tension of successfully defending a planet with a crippled laser cruiser, decided on the spot to change careers. Along the way, I’ve managed to fill just about every rung on the ladder in the development and publishing of these things, spoken at more conferences than I can remember, co-authored a book about developing online games and spent six years writing a rant column to point out the flaws in the industry and, maybe, improve things a bit. I’ve had my successes and failures, learned something from each… Basically, I was fortunate to have snuck in early, when no one was looking and before the publishers threw so much money at the industry that the bar to entry has become stratospheric for most.

And from that vantage point of 19 years gone, involvement in some capacity with over a dozen MMOs and uncounted other types of online games under my belt (or skirt, as the case may be), I raise a question about the height of that bar:

Is money killing this industry?

Overly dramatic, perhaps, but the content of the question is a serious one. From 1986 to about 1997, when the market was still relatively small and development money was very tight, we made quite a bit of progress in the design and development of MMOs. Small groups of innovative developers pretty much had free reign over their designs and it showed in the work. Each new game was, well, different, sometimes in startling and exciting ways. I know this is going to sound like a crusty old broad moaning for yesteryear, but it was a hell of an exciting time to be involved and I rarely see that level of excitement on development teams today.

It was only when millions of dollars started to be thrown at development that things changed. Meridian 59, the game that kicked off the third generation of MMOs in 1996, was made for a relative pittance by today’s standards, built mostly with sweat equity and passion until it was bought by 3DO and it had some very interesting concepts in it, for the time. Then came Ultima Online in 1997, the first MMO to spend over $5 million in development. It was mostly a graphic representation of a text MUD with some neat, but evolutionary, additional features included. It worked; the designers had included some of the very sticky features players love and the game was/is so broad and deep that I venture to guess it will be a long time before another game that comes close to it is developed.

Since that time, while budgets have risen to incredible, sometimes ridiculous, heights ($30 million to develop The Sims Online? On what did they spend all that money, anyway? Not the art, that’s for sure), we seem to have stopped innovating, for the most part. EverQuest in 1999 was a huge success, but it was just a tarted-up DikuMUD and that worked for the times (and came with a built-in audience, which was a smart, business-wise). When I look back between 1999 and now, in fact, the only MMO that had some true innovation to it was the original Asheron’s Call in 1999; the rest appear to me as all evolution, with the occasional flash of brilliance here and there. Not to say that some good games haven’t been developed – Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft and EverQuest II come to mind – but there hasn’t been much true innovation. Mostly we’ve been evolving, getting a bit better here and there, to be sure, but without the blinding innovation that makes one sit and exclaim “Whoa!”

I don’t think it is a coincidence that 1999-Present is also the period when publishers really became interested in MMOs and started throwing around money like a drunken sailor on shore leave. All of us in the Old Guard waited 15 or 20 years for those humongous budgets. To put this in proportion, between 1989 and 1992, I produced six MMOs for GEnie, three of them with graphic interfaces, for less than one third of one percent of the budget of TSO and every single one of those six games had something new and untried in it. Mythic, then AUSI, did its first game for GEnie in 1989 for the lordly advance of $3,000 and GEnie made back well over one hundred times that advance before I left in 1992. Believe me, by the mid-1990s, developers had had enough of living on passion and dreams; the publisher money was welcome, thank you very much.

However, considering the results, I’m not so sure it was worth it. In my opinion, we’ve traded innovation and passion for formula.  I can understand the reasoning, even if I don’t agree with it; if a publisher is going to risk millions of dollars, it wants to do it with as great a chance for success as possible. Many publishers see limiting the risk of failure by following the formula; hey, if EQ has a grind and 450,000 subscribers, we better have a grind, too! And so, we get a bunch of expensively-produced clones that add nothing to the industry and most of which will disappear beneath the waves of history without raising a ripple. It is happening in Asia right now.

We’re seeing another turn of that wheel with the success of WoW; there is tremendous pressure right now on development teams to “make your game more WoW-like!” Never mind that, for all that it is generally a good game, there is nothing much new there and that a significant portion of WoW’s success is built on the brand and the trust that players have in the developer; gimme some WOWsy orcs, biyotch!

So I return to the question: Is money killing us? Is this just a natural part of the evolution of the industry that we’ll get over someday, or do we need to turn on a dime and do things differently?

I leave the discussion in your hands.